Alleged CIA involvement in the Whitlam dismissal
It is alleged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved with the events leading up to the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, in which Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam was dismissed by Governor-General of Australia John Kerr, who had several ties to the CIA and its predecessor.
CIA contractor and convicted Soviet spy Christopher John Boyce, several authors, including John Pilger, as well as some Australian politicians, allege that the CIA backed Kerr to dismiss Whitlam, due to Whitlam's perceived left-wing policies including Australian withdrawal from the Vietnam War, as well as his views on Australian sovereignty. His conflict with the CIA is alleged to have come to a head when he discovered several CIA-led operations occurring in Australia and overseas conducted by ASIO and ASIS, leading him to threaten cancellation of the lease on the Pine Gap facility, ending the US-led (nominally joint) operation, which was integral to the CIA's signals interception operations in the southern hemisphere.
Whitlam's threat to not renew the lease on the Pine Gap facility was allegedly seen by the CIA as compromising the integrity of intelligence operations pertaining to the satellite projects Rhyolite (subsequently Aquacade) and Argus (a proposed successor, later cancelled), used for monitoring and surveillance of missile launch sites in the Soviet Union and China, which were unknown to the Australian government at the time despite a blanket sharing agreement between the two countries.
Kerr denied any CIA involvement and Whitlam said Kerr did not need any encouragement from the CIA to sack him, and also denied his involvement in private communications, although Kerr allegedly maintained several links to CIA-funded organisations such as LawAsia and the magazine Quadrant, and was referred to as "Our Man" by the CIA according to whistle-blower and leaker Christopher John Boyce.
The action of an unelected representative sacking an elected prime minister and replacing him with a caretaker prime minister was referred to by Australian Labor Party and former Member of the House of Representatives Peter Staples as "the most blatant act of external interference in Australia's affairs and its autonomy as a nation and a democracy".